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COS opens best-of-3 series at Delta

Visalia
Published 9:56 p.m. PT April 30, 2015

COS sophomore Dillon Kelley and the COS baseball team opens a best-of-three playoff series today against San Joaquin Delta in Stockton.(Photo: Juan Villa)

Story Highlights

The No. 17 College of the Sequoias baseball team opens a best-of-three series against No. 1 San Joaquin Delta today in Stockton.

Delta (33-3) knocked COS (20-17) out of the final four in last season’s state tournament.

Joey Gallegos remembers the College of the Sequoias baseball team’s final game of the 2014 season vividly.

Heading into the ninth inning, the scoreboard read: San Joaquin Delta 3, College of the Sequoias 3.

But, all of a sudden, things started to unravel with two outs left with the Mustangs at-bat.

With runners at first and second in a final-four, winner-take-all contest, the Giants’ infield couldn’t cleanly field a grounder and they went on to commit three game-changing errors.

With those miscues in tow, San Joaquin Delta scored eight unearned runs and won 11-3. The Mustangs went on to play in the CCCAA State Baseball Championship game, where they lost 5-3 to Orange Coast.

“Something like that, kind of stays with you forever,” Gallegos said. “I don’t want to say it’s kind of an everyday occurrence, but a lot of times, you kind of reflect at how it ended and how you could have done things differently. I mean it still kind of hurts today, I’m not going to lie, especially coming up to playoffs and the final four. You think about it more, but it was a heck of a run last year and we were proud of it.”

The No. 17 Giants (20-17) will get another shot at the team who knocked them out of the state tournament last season, and it starts today with a best-of-three series against the Mustangs (33-3) to open the Northern California Regional in Stockton.

San Joaquin Delta opened the 2015 campaign, winning 27 games in a row, but have dropped all three of its losses in the month of April.

“Nobody’s really gonna pick us to do anything,” COS coach Jody Allen said. “Nobody’s gonna give us a chance and we’ll wear that underdog badge with honor. We really have nothing to lose. The guys should be loose. The guys should go in and play hard.”

Although COS faces an uphill climb, the Giants are battle-tested.

Citing experience from last season, where COS won two road postseason series against Sierra and Chabot to punch its ticket to the state’s final four, Allen believes the history is there for the Giants to make some noise.

COS has already proven it can win a high-stakes game on the road.

The Giants came from behind on Tuesday to upset Yuba College 8-3 in Marysville.

“Our team has the ability to play with anybody and they’ve done that,” Allen said. “If you look over our last week, we were in every game we played. We had a walk-off loss [2-1 to Taft in 10 innings], a walk-off loss [5-4 to Merced], and then we won 5-2 against Reedley. And then we turn around and win a playoff game, so against good teams, against big moments in the season, we’ve played tough. But it’ll be tough to do that at Delta. They’re a really good team, but if you can stay with them, that’s going to be the key.”

San Joaquin Delta is batting .271 with 224 runs through 36 games, but Allen admitted the strength of the Mustangs is their pitching staff. The starting rotation of Camer Leeper, Dean Kremer and Rick Delgado combined to throw for 231 1/3 innings. Leeper leads the team with 84 2/3 frames tossed.

Leeper, a lefty, owns a 1.59 earned run average and Kremer isn’t far behind with a 1.75. Delgado boasts a 1.82 ERA.

All three are also undefeated on the year. Leeper sports a remarkable 12-0 record and Kremer is 10-0. Delgado is 7-0.

As a team, the Mustangs’ ERA is 1.87.

“Offensively, I don’t think they’re unbelievable,” Allen said. “But they can pitch. They pitch outstanding, and we have hit good pitching this year, so if we can step up and do what we’ve done against a few other teams, we may have a good chance.”

COS is hitting .286 with a lefty-dominated lineup. Gallegos leads the squad with a .361 average and had the third-best mark in the Central Valley Conference.

A nice key addition to the Giants’ lineup this season was the return of sophomore Matt Cota, who missed the team’s entire magical run in 2014 with a knee injury.

Allen has the former Tulare Western star playing the designated hitter role, and he leads the team with 27 RBIs. The 6-2, 205-pounder also led the Giants in that same category as a freshman in 2013 with 24.

“We just need to go out there and play as hard as we can,” Cota said. “If everybody pulls on the same rope, we’ll be fine.”

How to attend

COS opens a best-of-three playoff series versus San Joaquin Delta today at 2 p.m. in Stockton. Game 2 is scheduled for Saturday at 11 a.m., and if necessary, Game 3 is set to follow at 2:30 p.m. All games are played at Nick Cecchetti Field. COS Sports Notes are on 5B.